World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

The United Nations World Food Program is more than doubling the number of people it is planning to feed in Niger, as a food crisis caused by drought in the eastern Sahel continues to spread.(..)"The lean season normally starts in Niger towards June and July and lasts until September or October, which is the harvest time. But this year because of the bad harvest last year, the lean season started much earlier," says Gianluca Ferrera, WFP's deputy director for Niger.

U.N. humanitarian agencies sounded the alarm on Tuesday about a growing food crisis in the West African state of Niger, one of the world's poorest countries.(..)The WFP is doubling the number of people who receive its food aid under its relief programme to 2.3 million. It said it normally needs 3-4 months to deliver food to Niger, and immediate contributions would enable it to procure food in the region, such as in Nigeria.

A Rome food agency says it is seeking to step up its operation in Niger and feed 2.3 million people-more than twice the number it previously helped. The World Food Program said Monday it was acting in response to continued drought in the eastern Sahel desert, which has destroyed harvests and scorched pastures, worsening the food crisis.

An increasingly desperate search for food is driving a mass exodus from parched agricultural land in western Africa's Sahel region where the UN says up to 10 million people face hunger.(..)"We need to move quickly to provide a buffer for the people and government of Niger against the shock of a serious food crisis," said Thomas Yanga, WFP Regional Director for West Africa.

Aid agencies are asking donors for US$133 million to help the government feed millions of people at risk of going hungry, adding to $57 million already received or committed.(..)UNICEF and WFP plan in the coming weeks to do blanket food distributions for 25,000 children between six and 23 months to help prevention malnutrition. WFP will also distribute basic foods to 1.5 million people in affected areas.

The UN's World Food Programme said Thursday that it was preparing to more than double food aid to Niger, where famine is looming amid a poor harvest. Niger is becoming a "major humanitarian challenge" as the "last harvest was very bad due to a shortage of rain," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Programme.

IRIN has asked a range of experts over the past year why malnutrition is recurrent in Niger even after decades of donor support and government programmes. Two of the hardest-hit regions were focused on - Diffa, which has borders Chad, and Zinder, which borders Nigeria.

An approaching food crisis in Niger has prompted the United Nations and its NGO partners to issue an appeal for aid internationally. (..) “Niger is facing a structural state of high acute malnutrition and has one of the highest rates of population increase in the world. It also has a harsh environment, made even worse by climate change and the poor management of environmental resources,” Malek Triki, public information officer for the WFP told MediaGlobal.

They are simple words humanitarian workers in Africa use often but dared not speak in this impoverished nation: hunger, starvation. And definitely not famine.For years, President Mamadou Tandja denied there was any food crisis in Niger, even when images were broadcast of skeletal children too weak to brush away flies. Now that the military has ousted Tandja, aid agencies are speaking out, with good reason: The country is facing its worst food shortage in years.

Food insecurity is affecting some eight million people in Niger, a United Nations (UN) spokesman said, reports China's Xinhua news agency. (..) The World Food Programme also said that some 29,000 cases of malnutrition have already been reported to local authorities since the start of the year, Nesirky said.